Look Out! Here comes Everyone. Peter James-Smith

This is James Joyce's quote on the Catholic Church in Finnegans Wake and I often think of it when at 9,30 Mass at Holy Trinity because here is everyone. We, the Church, are everyone and hope to be everyone. We are Christ's Body, we are Peter and Paul and the family running the cafe on the corner. We are Maximilian Kolbe entering the gas chamber in the place of a Jewish family man. We are Thomas Aquinas explaining the faith to his generation and we are the refugee from Zimbabwe or the Congo.

We are Francis preaching to the birds and a bishop imprisoned in China. We are the student praying for success in the exams, we are Benedict XVI praying for the Church and the SVDP dishing out soup and bread.

We are the brothers and sisters sent to Africa to preach the Word. We are born Catholics, we are converts to the Faith, we are bishops, priests, deacons and extraordinary people and we are everyone. All equal in God's sight, all forgiven, all open to His love.

It is this inclusiveness that is so comforting about the Church. It is able to embrace great minds and simple souls at the same time and see them as of equal worth. It can accept widely differing opinions and viewpoints. In the days of the Tridentine Latin Mass my father was chatting about uniformity of expression and uniformity of thought with a Catholic friend and discussing with him what he perceived as the rigidity of Catholic thought. I always remember his friend's response despite not remembering his name! “We Catholics may all do and say the same thing but we all have different opinions on what we are actually doing and saying.”

What most appeals to me about the Church is its ability to reconcile different opinions, different spiritualities, different peoples and lead them all to God. Spirituality is a very good example. At Holy Trinity, as a Jesuit Parish, we are exposed to Ignatian spirituality but it doesn't necessarily speak to all of us yet we can recognise its validity and worth and are richer for that exposure. The same would apply to Franciscan or Carmelite spirituality, or any other spirituality. It strikes a chord with some people but not others and it doesn't matter.

The Church truly is for everyone. It is not a matter of “right belief” whatever that may be. The Church is for those who don't believe, who don't understand. It's for those who can't fit in, for those who wonder why they are there at all. Prayer and the sacraments, the sense of faith, holiness and compassion draw people to the Church and ultimately to God. I'm sure there are many members of our congregation who are not signed-on-the-dotted line Catholics but have an awareness of the presence of God and a sense of receiving grace just by being with us.

Look out! Here comes Everyone! Your father, your grandmother, the sailor from the Philippines, the family sitting next to you, the gay couple in front of you, the beggar and the millionaire.....here comes the Catholic Church.